Over at Small Wars Journal I came upon an interesting piece titled "The Demise of Secretary Wynne," by a Mr. J. Bernhard "Jon" Compton.
Around here, we can be unkind to the Air Force at times (we pick on the other services, too). It absolutely drives Dusty nuts, sometimes.
On a first scan, Dusty will like this piece - it essentially asserts that the success of the surge is due to... the Air Force. And is written by a man who purports to be, "a service agnostic."
Heh.
After he reads it, however, he won't be as supportive of it (though there are parts which will warm his heart). Because Mr. Compton would appear to be about as "service agnostic" as those callers to right wing talk radio who say... "I'm a conservative, but..." and proceed to rant about a subject in a way that would cause a Daily Kos diarist to nod his head in happy agreement.
Not that Mr. Compton doesn't have some good points - such as this one, where he slams American newsgatherers (and, it must be noted, consumers of the product):
Sadly, civilians like me who do not have a clearance are left to fend for themselves when it comes to gathering information. Between the coverage of American Idol contestants and Britney Spears’ mental condition, we’re occasionally treated to an update of what’s going on in the world. Taken at face value, all we ever needed in Iraq was an extra 20% troop strength and we’d have had the place stabilized years ago. Unfortunately the penetrating analysis of CNN only goes about that far, but the more discerning among us know that that cannot possibly be the whole story.
No arguments there. Military coverage in the MSM is weak - but it's also weak because the people don't demand more of it, as quite possibly most of the people who really want it have discovered places like Small Wars Journal, Long War Journal, Belmont Club, Threatswatch, Mudville, Blackfive, Information Dissemination, Armchair Generalist, North Shore Journal, Neptunus Lex, Opfor, Grim's Hall, Civilian Irregular Information Defense Group, and between comment parties and gun pr0n, this place. And that's naming just a few, and not even touching the distaff side of the house, such as Villainous Company and Homefront Six, or Fuzzilicous Thinking, where you can really peek inside the machine. And having those outlets, no longer seek to get it from the MSM, who are then better able to ignore having a good understanding of things militant, and give us more data than we ever really wanted or needed to know about Britney Spears personal grooming habits, or which cute blonde white chick disappeared recently or who overdosed on prescription meds.
Then Mr.Compton warms to his subject:
Something I’ve often heard Rick say, and I believe he is correct, is that the Army does not understand air power. Often their plans minimize its use, and their after action reports under report its effectiveness. Case in point, the surge in Iraq. While sitting in Ricks E ring office, he asked me point blank whether or not I believed a 20% increase (or “surge”) in troop strength could really make much difference to the situation. It was obviously a baited question, but it wasn’t one I had to think about much. To my mind, the increase could not have been that effective; there had to have been some fundamental doctrinal change in order for that small an increase to have had the dramatic effect that it’s had. Prior to this discussion, I’d already been pondering the issue for some time.
[snippage]
But the Army hasn’t helped the perception. According to them, those extra boots on the ground was all that it took to better stabilize the country. Patreus [sic] has even said as much in his testimony to congress and in the reports he’s signed off on in the field. So here is where Rick drops the bomb.Rick’s office was unconvinced. So they initiated an investigation to see exactly what had changed, other than boots on the ground. As is turned out, not only had the number of troops on the ground increased by 20%, but air strike missions had also increased by 400%. What’s more, air munitions released had increased by over 1000%, all since the beginning of the surge.
I'm not going to fisk this article in it's entirety - you should go read the post [Update, and the comments, where my fellow travelers reside I see, upon checking back in]. You should *always* go read the post and make your own assessment, btw. Don't rely on just what I'm interested in, because I'm not addressing all of what it has to say, and not just because leaving openings is what gets you guys to comment.
"not only had the number of troops on the ground increased by 20%, but air strike missions had also increased by 400%. What’s more, air munitions released had increased by over 1000%, all since the beginning of the surge."
Uh-huh. Leaving aside the way-too-simplistic arithmetic analysis contained in that sentence, what made this difference?
Some huge doctrinal change on the part of the Army? Of course not, leave aside that rewriting the doctrine is just what LTG General Petraeus did at Fort Leavenworth prior to being sent to Iraq to, um, *implement* that doctrine.
No, that wasn't it, as Mr. Compton notes,
What had changed was clear. It wasn’t the extra boots on the ground that was turning the tide, it was the increase in HUMINT and the ability to hit a target with precision munitions from the air within a time frame of only 7 minutes.
Mind you - I don't recall reading about a huge surge in AF aircraft suddenly stacked in the skies over Baghdad and other major swaths of AQI-influenced land.
No, those boots on the ground didn't have anything to do with that increase in HUMINT. I guess that came from Predators being flown from the Nevada desert, and the interviews and data gathering being done by the guys loitering overhead in their A10s, F16s, Bones, B2s and B-52s.
Not from the guys in HMMWVs and body armor, moving in and amongst the population, sitting down and eating dinner with them, helping them get irrigation gear for their parched farms, building schools and clinics, thereby creating the conditions whereby the locals could feel safe enough to give up the information that lead to the <s>artillery, </s> oops - Effects officers and FOs and Air Force ALOs and ETACs (who moved *with* those boots on the ground) who called in all those air strikes - after visually confirming targets and doing their best to ensure there wasn't an orphanage next door - that the guys loitering about with their ordnance happily delivered on time, with precision, and of course, panache.
No, it was the Air Force, not the troops of the Surge, or the doctrine that underpinned the surge.
Piffle.
It was the troops on the ground, setting the conditions on the ground, and the personnel of the Air Force, who built that instrument of power, combined with the odd sailor here and there helping the Iraqis get their agriculture back in order and doing other things which free up soldiers to patrol, who made it happen.
Mr. Compton has an interesting view, and his article is a worthy read. And his criticisms of our news organizations are certainly apt. And the Army may well have some of the pathologies that his buddy Dr. Andres avers.
However, those aircraft dropping those bombs in a timely manner were always overhead and have been since 2003. The sea-change in what changed the level of their contribution to the fight was... the Army changed how it was fighting.
It took the team. Please.
Your mileage may vary.
I'll read the thing ASAP but right now I'm hitting the rack--been up ~20 hours flying in from London, catching a flight to Indy, driving 2 hours home and then taking the dog to the vet for his periodic shave & haircut so I'm mentally goofy at the moment.
That said, it sounds to me like I'd probably agree with you more than you think, based on what you said in the post, especially the last part about teamwork...might be something to that concept. Heh.
Yup. A JAAT was a pretty good example of how to utilize disparate forces to capitalize on each one's strengths and minimize each one's weakness. Got you used to playing nicely together and sharing the
killstoys...In fact, in one of the reports I was reading re: Rorke's Drift, Afghanistan, a former governor of the province indicated that many villagers had joined the Taliban (very likely gave them all the information about the base that they needed to know) due to an unfortunate air raid on the village not long previously.
thus, it isn't just dropping "more" bombs, it is dropping them judiciously and with careful purpose. In fact, pardon me for saying, that we may need to be less ready to take out a whole village/compound with air power and suffer a few more casualties (G_d forbid) going into the village.
While that sounds cold, I would put forward two points: 1) if the war drags out forever, more people die and add to the over all toll of the war in even greater numbers; 2) The people you don't kill today, might be the people that don't kill you tomorrow.
Unless, of course, we're planning to win this war through the Smith/Pershing method.
I'll also plan on reading the article, but even without reading it I can tell you that your conclusion hits the target better than a 500lb GPS-guided bomb! It took all the players on our team to reach the desired results from the surge. It took a change in doctrine to help us understand and meet the counterinsergency. It took more "boots on the ground" interacting with local citizens and convincing them that we're not so bad, after all. It took more, and more accurate, human intelligence to help us find the targets we needed to find. It took the renewed training and professionalism to restore confidence of the Iraqi Army and Iraqi police, so local Iraqis felt sufficiently secure to work with us. And, yes as a former AF officer I have to say, it took more planes in the air to support the "boots on the ground," as well as the Iraqi Army, to take out the targets we needed taken out. The combined arms concept, and acting as a team, is not necessarily a dead concept. The application of air power is a formidable thing, but you still needed all the other players to make the surge work!
Too many conclusions in the past regarding the air force and COIN have been presumptive, and have lacked raw data to back up claims. I get the impression there is some useful raw data to build on.
How in the world did CIIDG fall in with that formation of deep thinkers?
Thanks.
He's still getting his basic data for "analysis" from tv? You have got to be kidding me. Even I learned to use http://www.strategypage.com/ for military tidbits soon after 9/11.
When you're first starting off, best to start off with tactics and little things cause they are not so much complicated or require higher level concepts.
<B>As is turned out, not only had the number of troops on the ground increased by 20%, but air strike missions had also increased by 400%. What’s more, air munitions released had increased by over 1000%, all since the beginning of the surge.</b>
Given that once you crack terrorist things apart and grab intel from them, rolling thunder type operations can then be initiated. Since the Army doesn't want a bunch of collateral damage with the terrorists running off, they must have refused to order strike missions unless they had solid info, like on z man's loc.
With more intel, with more security, with more trust by the locals, you also produced a chain reaction of more intel, more security, etc. Which meant, more demand for air strikes cause now we can "see" the enemy and where he is hiding.
Technically speaking, if predators and fixed wing aircraft could hunt down insurgents hiding amongst civilians, they already would have by the time the surge started.
<B>Some huge doctrinal change on the part of the Army?</b>
The ground to air liasion was pretty solid from my view here in the States in 2005. Unless the Army found new targets for the air bombers, I'm not sure what they thought they could drop more bombs on.
I'd be intersted to know what 11x fold in "munitions" mean. Is that 11x fold in number of munitions? Weight of munitions? Type of certain munitions? Details are what spells victory or disaster in logistics.
<B>It wasn’t the extra boots on the ground that was turning the tide, it was the increase in HUMINT</b>
And how did he think we got that HUMINt without COIN and more people doing COIN?
<B>I guess that came from Predators being flown from the Nevada desert</b>
Must have upgraded those Predators with AI and Snoop cams that could see through walls and record people's conversations inside.
<B>Your mileage may vary.</b>
I was reading and commenting to your post line by line, John. You decide how far my mileage varied with yours ; )
8^ )
More counter-productive than the CIA's sabotage and leaking of national policy/secrets? Woah.
It has been said before, and not by me, that the Air Force is the least "military" of all four of the US military branches. It is not a surprise that they are able to integrate civilian concepts so easily or readily.
I think that has something to do with the fact that Air Force power can't stop a suicide bomber from killing a bunch of civilians and US soldiers. I think it also has something to do with the fact that the Army is not allowed, nor has it much desire to, squash most of the buildings in Iraq. Thus "minimizing" the use of Air Power compared to what we could do.
I get the sense that these two never particularly studied the difference between a military force acting as an insurgency to help sustain a status quo environment and a military acting to preserve the status quo environment with just brute strength. Usually insurgencies are the terrorists or revolutionaries like Khomeini that want to overthrow the status quo. Counter-insurgent forces must find a way to negate the power of the revolutoinaries and death squads. Yet the revolutionaries and death squads are too smart to go toe to toe with the government forces and allow superior government firepower and numbers to annihilate the cadre of the Revolutionary Guards or some such. So how to bypass this little asymmetrical situation?
You do to them what they are doing to the government. Simple really, although not so easy in execution.
An insurgency is often best countered by another insurgency, like Al Anbar's Awakening. The terrorists surge against us, and we help the Iraqis surge against them. The government occupies a level of power that the terrorists are unable to challenge, just as the terrorists occupy a level of power that Iraqi civilians are unable to challenge. Break that cycle and everything else falls.
His comments about TV news are much more an indictment of what consumers choose to view than his own personal news-gathering.
Well, they used to say that independent corroboration of people's analyses was a great way to figure out if people are on the same wavelength and to see if two people of different minds can arrive at the same conclusions from the same data. Helps filter out the mistakes and blindspots, I was told ; )
OK, there are some things about the surge that were, if not doctrinal shifts, at least tactical shifts. Gen. Patreus deployed the troops to the trouble spots and had them live there, not just show up once a day, then cruise back into an FOB. That would give you HUMINT and air support targeting. You can’t talk to the guy on the street, nor direct a flight of F-16s from inside Al Faw Palace. When I was at Victory, there was an MP Brigade that had more time outside the wire than any of the maneuver units that passed through, yet they just did mounted patrol to try to keep the main thoroughfares clear, that doesn’t give the AF many targeting options.
I’ve also seen great teamwork between the services in the field, but somewhere between Ramadi and the Puzzle Palace, it seems to always get parochial before the press releases…
I think it's overly simplistic to say this. "I think that has something to do with the fact that Air Force power can't stop a suicide bomber from killing a bunch of civilians and US soldiers." If I have an F-16/B-1/Armed drone team sitting on a pass in 24/7 all weather coverage that a terr must cross to teach, supply, drug, and then arm a suicide bomber and have thereby stopped the tango from going thru that pass or, when I blow said tango to smithereens as he tries to transit said pass, I've stopped said homicidal bomber cold, ain't I?
I'm no 'we'll win entirely by air' guy, but the AF is getting slagged and their input to COIN belittled for no good reason by some around here.
I'm a big believer in Purple. It's a Team Thang. "Learn it. Love it. Live it."
That may look ideal on paper but in reality, suicide bombers are usually only detected in Iraq, and other places, when they are already so near the target zone that dropping a bomb on them would obliterate your own forces and allied civilians at the same time.
<B>If I have an F-16/B-1/Armed drone team sitting on a pass in 24/7 all weather coverage that a terr must cross to teach, supply, drug, and then arm a suicide bomber</b>
If you have advance knowledge of the enemy, then you almost don't need to "utilize more air power" simply to acquire an advantage. The advantage was in foreknowledge and waiting in ambush for enemies to come through a supply route they thought safe. That's the advantage. The advantage wouldn't be present in the "Army utilizing Air Power more" as the article suggested.
No matter how many suicide bombers you blow up before they get armed, more will always come. The important aspect is the last line of defense. You will never get ALL the suicide bombers, so what counts is your ability to negate them from killing people at the target site with area security or reaction forces.
Get 99.99% of the suicide bombers in the total world, yet lack sufficient internal defenses to stop one successful attack and you will either get 9/11 or a mass casualty incident like the Shia pilgrammage stampede, which was not even due to a suicide bombing if I recall correctly.
<B>but the AF is getting slagged and their input to COIN belittled for no good reason by some around here. </b>
How is the AF "getting slagged" because we disagree with some Pentagon guy over the Army's effective use of air power? How is an issue about the Army's competency or incompetency in using "enough airpower", as declared by the article in question, all of a sudden a slam on the AF when the Army is defended on the merits?
It isn't on paper either. It's along the lines of the whole idea of cutting lines of comm. By controling use of ground thru use of airpower(which isn't just a means of delivering warheads to foreheads, it's an intelligence tool, and was so long before cameras and UAV) I've produced the effect of limiting creation of suicide bombers in the first place, and left said bomber as just a disgruntled indig to be habilitated. It isn't just strategic interdiction(or at least, that's how I read the literature on EBO and the AF) either.
You're missing the point, really. Using airpower, which, again, isn't just a means of delivering ordinance, but also a means of gathering and acting on information in real time, you *can* stop the terrorist cell from transiting to City X and then training a slue of suiciders. It's stopping him well to 'the left of boom' and reducing the overall threat to *all* forces thereby.
"so what counts is your ability to negate them from killing people at the target site with area security or reaction forces."
Disagree totally. That's *one* part of the equation. Better not to have to kill them at target site by not having them to begin with. Interdict the trainers and supplies long before they get there means fewer trainees, fewer attacks, fewer deaths all around. Just because it's a metric one likes or understands doesn't make it into *the only or best one*. Killing one inflagrante delictico is good, and so is stopping them well away from that moment. Both matter, both are essential, and neither is subordinate to the other.
The problem as I see it is our author claims war can be one thru use of precision alone. Just another in a line of air power theorists who believe that their arm rules all, knows all, does all the importatnt stuff, and everyone else is there to facilitate that. This isn't that far removed from LeMay, imnsho.
And, yes, saying this "that the Air Force is the least "military" of all four of the US military branches" is ultimately calling them Blue Business Suiters and un-Real Warriors, and bellitilling them. You may not have said it, but you did repeat it.
That's the problem with Compton's assessment. In order to target a bad guy, you first have to *find out * he's a bad guy. Somebody has to point him out and ID him, and if he's acting perfectly normally, there's zero way to do that from the air.
Unless the Air Force is dropping cluster mines, radioactive area denial munitions, and FAE bombs, you cannot control the ground through use of air power. Even if you did, you still couldn't "control the ground". You could only deny it to the enemy.
What you said is on paper, electronic at least, since it's electronic in format and it's right here on my screen. The fact that it is only on paper and not actually being used to any great effect on the ground in "reality", says most of the things that needs to be said. And certainly it also looks good, since you wouldn't write it if you believed it was bad.
X on the information and data intel gather. Sig INT is not the same as HUMINT. Especially with an asymmetrical enemy that have learned to use old school tech to beat new school and expensive tech. You're going to find it very hard to find a buddy-buddy, balanced equation, "team" effort by trying to substitute HUMINT with air power SigInt.
I said it looks good on paper and it does. The small problem is that it doesn't work in reality. At best, it is like a crap shoot. Figure a certan percentage chance of getting the authorization to fire, a certain percentage chance of getting lucky and finding a valid target, and a certain percentage chance that these are the guys that recruit or train suicide bombers. (Although these days, suicide bomber training consists of telling someone to drive a car to a certain destination, then remote activating the bomb hidden in the car the cannonfodder was ordered to drive) What you get is still a Russian roulette gamble, a perpetual defensive crouch. You'll take no territory and make no inroads on the enemy strategy wise. Cause you're not attacking. You're just reacting to what the enemy is doing or can do to you. Strategically you're on the defense, given such a scenario of air power, even if you are tactically on the offensive. It should be, ideally, the other way around.
A lot of things are planned to occur, that should have happened in war and battle, but usually they don't happen according to one static plan.
All this "better than this or that" comparisons mean nothing when there's no actual solution set available to be applied in reality. If there's nothing better as an alternative, then there is no point to comparisons.
<B>Both matter, both are essential, and neither is subordinate to the other. </b>
What's essential is what works. Not this ideal balanced equation that gets jacked up when it confronts the enemy. Certainly there's room for improvement, but you have to prove that you can actually improve on such things. Neither the article linked to from the Original Post nor your arguments have even hinted at whether such proof even exists except as uncorrelated statistical inferences.
<B>And, yes, saying this "that the Air Force is the least "military" of all four of the US military branches" is ultimately calling them Blue Business Suiters and un-Real Warriors, and bellitilling them.</b>
It's either true or it is not true. There is no valid subjective critiera for "I don't like it".
When someone wants to talk about the Air Force's ability to integrate civilian ideas or practices into their SOP, suddenly it becomes "belittling" the Air Force to say that this is probably due to the Air Force's own inclination towards the civilian sphere rather than the military sphere? If you don't like the Air Force's closeness with civilians that much, then don't talk about the AF's ability to integrate civilian ideas and practices more easily than other services or don't support the people that are talking about such things.
Like I said before, the whole thing about the "team" or "neither is subordinate to the other" looks good on paper, but in reality what we have is people with personal prejudices and biases to deal with. People that defend a branch because of emotional preferences rather than a focus on performance or objective reality. People that'll make wrong inferences from data that they personally are biased towards supporting. And that won't be handled and fixed by air power, period. You need people, ground troops or otherwise, to deal with such things, unshielded by metal and data acquisition systems or sensors. This applies the same whether it's allied command doing things or the enemy command doing things.
I see Bill got to where I was going to go, by completing Ymar's thesis on "How did you know he was a bad guy?"
Which cuts to the heart of the matter. When it's the Ho Chi Minh trail, where we've decided, supportably, that *all* traffic on that trail is targetable, then your premise is workable, Ry. But for a guy who pushes the 3GW/4GW boulder around, you're thinking on this topic thus far is pretty retro.
One of the things I'm working on deals with the issues of ambiguity, which is at the core of this discussion. Thus far, it's clear that ambiguity is most successfully reduced through HUMINT means, facilitated by TECHINT. That is more in the realm of the guys on the ground, not the guys in the air. The guys in the air provide a lot of TECHINT. Which is targeted by, and provides targeting data to, the HUMINT side of things. Together they acccomplish much more than either can alone, especially in terms of exploiting the knowledge gained.
Of course, that presupposes you *have* the helicopters available and that your SOP allows you to do it. Look for a TINS! in a bit, since I have some *beautiful* examples of how TECHINT and HUMINT can achieve good results when they work together and a horrible example of what happens when they don't.
Yup, we had TECHINT. We just didn't *call* it that...
BT said.......Yup, we had TECHINT. We just didn't *call* it that...
Do I "sniff" a good TINS in the making?
I know that. And I agree with it, in part, you can to some small degree without resorting to the 'if they run they're VC if they don't they're well trained VC' stuff.
Which is why I said this: "The problem as I see it is our author claims war can be one thru use of precision alone. Just another in a line of air power theorists who believe that their arm rules all, knows all, does all the importatnt stuff, and everyone else is there to facilitate that. This isn't that far removed from LeMay, imnsho." THat's simply saying air can do all, from gathering intel to acting on it. Which, it can't. It has limitations.
I was going after the insinuation that airpower cannot ever stop a terrorist. Which is why I called it simplistic and laid out a viable scenario where it can and does happen. I categorically did not say it was useful in urban environs nor the only way to handle the problem. Quite the contrary, I said it was a key part of the total package. Somebody was running with an overgeneralization and I stepped in to correct it. Airpower can and does stop terrorists and suicide bombers. It does so well to the left of boom. That was it.
There have been things like this, just last month(week?) there was a big to-do about a supposed wedding convoy that resulted in 40+ 'dead women and children'. So the claim that what I've laid out is not being done is bogus as hell. It is being done. J pointed out that it is a PR nightmare, which in 4GW sucks, is irrelevant to the point that it can and *is* fracking done. So this 'Neither the article linked to from the Original Post nor your arguments have even hinted at whether such proof even exists except as uncorrelated statistical inferences." is bogus. It does happen. THere are instances of this. I can think of three such convoys over the last 5 years that have been portrayed as 'massacres' by airpower which followed this template which have been shown in the media to be US bungling. Statistical inferences? Hardly.
Now I'm getting jumped like I'm part of the Bomber Mafia. Sigh. What'd I ever do to you two, besides ankle bite and leave cheeto dust everywhere?
To go further, well, we could use facial recog, the KIP software on a group we already know about, use regional knowledge of 'hey, they shouldn't be there this time of year, ergo that's fishy so let's do something to draw a reaction out of them'. Or, if we're staying Purple, vector a light infantry unit to intercept and check it out while maintaining air on station. If it goes sour you kill from above. It's a team thing, and air has many important parts to play. To say that there is 0 chance of info to act upon from air is false. Saying that little occurs is true. A C-3 Sentry orbiting picks up phone, vectors a Pred onto site, Pred does visual, visual confirms it's some baddies car, Pred fires. We have had things like that happen. That isn't just electrons being pushed by me either. That C-3 is getting you actionable. That PRed is getting you actionable. They are both air assets and not grunts (to which someone around here seems to be overly wedded to) To say otherwise is not a true statement. TECHINT has become a dirty word in the vernacular and HUMINT all the rage. They both have their places and both are useful.
Again, I was countering the opinion that air has no means to counter terrs/homiciders. It does. It may not be proximal to the event, but so what. If the effect is the same I don't care if it is retro sounding or not. It has happened. It is not an easy metric to measure since you'd be doing extrapolation, but it does work. And, to turn the argument back, if all foot patrol HUMINT worked so grandly there'd be no suiciders either because there's been foot looking at Syria and Saudi and the parts that Iranian trained stuff from the NW would have to cross. So, we'd have to prove that that is improvable too, right? That's in part why the argument is overly simplistic. It isn't that simple, never was and never will be. And if someone is saying I've implied some kind of weighting coefficients you're wrong. I do quantitative work in real life, and this is something very hard to quantify. I'm only speaking qualititatively. I don't know what the 'weighting coefficients' are or should be. I haven't proposed an equation so much as ID'd two arguments in a much larger equation.
The point of the bastion on the strat level is to basically have a trip wire to catch and cut up terrs as they transit. Chief says you do this operationally and lower by having large numbers of light infantry with lots of fire support(via firebases and stationed fairly close helo gunships). I've got no problem with that. It does what I think needs done(have a trip wire to catch and therefor interdict well before they reach urban-ish/friendly environs to wreck havok with). It is not Khe San as lightning rod for attrition(if I have to say it a third time I will, it is not Khe San as honey pot for attrition based combat).
Ymar, really, you're focusing over much on killing and body counts. It is creating conditions that matter, not how many terrs we kill. It is generating the school of fish that they cannot swim thru that matters. That isn't defensive. That's Patraeus, and Galula and Nagl and.....
But, but, but........................ you talked about work, John. ([*whap*] yipe! What's with putting the Rod of Smitting into the rolled up newspaper, huh?)
Really, you and Bill are jumping on me a bit much beyond necessary for saying that yes, Virginia, air can and does do exactly what was said it could not(ID and disrupt terr actions). Since when did outlining how it does so revoke my Purple People membership? I never said it was air alone when i actually did say that air alone cannot.
Um, yes. I would think so, because he said "Look for a TINS! in a bit, since I have some *beautiful* examples of how TECHINT and HUMINT can achieve good results when they work together and a horrible example of what happens when they don't."
But now I'm just in a bad mood being nit picky.
"sniff a good TINS"......."sniff" .......as in 'sniffer"......an aparatus installed in a UH-1 back in the day. You go flying around the countryside slow and low and it could supposedly pick up the scent of Victor Charles. Definitely not a fun mission.....
Technology..........Inteligence........TECHINT.......we had it but didn't know there was a name for it.
Hope that clears up my comment for Mr. Ry........I didn't figure anybody but BillT would catch it anyway.
Just not here...
Argghhh! You're drilling way down, Chief, into one scenario and not admitting that another exists. And ignoring that I said that in an urban environment it doesn't work that good, if at all. Though, there is stuff in the works to change that. Something like the KIP program.
As CPT H says, context matters. Where we're talking about matters. Out in the boonies of Afghanistan instead of the heart of a village or city(like Iraq)? Dude. With airborne video surviellance much more likely, angles and altitude restrictions are reduced, in the boonies air cannot do the ID on it's lonesome? Even ghetto birds of LA are able to gather info in prep for and during gang sweeps, Chief. To say 100% impossible is 100% wrong. Limited, but 0 is not true. Where you can apply it is 100% true.
And what about intel over time? You note that, hey, a carravan comes thru a certain area and a week later there's an uptic in violence. So, based on what the aerial sensors have gathered for you the decision is made to sit in wait for the next caravan. That's actionable. That's air. That's way the hell to the left of boom. Context matters.
YOu guys are acting like I'm a network centric bigot or something. No, no, no, no, no. Again, I was telling Ymar that air has value in COIN, and outlined a real world example of how that would work. Stop kneeing me in the kidneys, wouldya? ;) I did not say that air can do all. Quite the contrary, I slagged LeMay himself and his 'air wins alone' brethren. But there was a greater than necessary Valentine to sloggers that needed deflating, so I deflated it.
Mr, Jewell, don't go capitalizing my handle and putting Mr. in front of it. I'm the lowest on totem pole 'round here and that ain't allowed(ask Der Adjutant). You're breaking the rulez! (No blood no foul, as Chick Hearn used to say, particularly when it's my own idiocy that caused the incident.)
Though, I gotta wonder how such a gas chromotography apparatus would work. With all the air turbulance and stuff(vapors, exhaust) from the helo that'd have to be accounted for somehow. I wonder what the detection regime for Hoc Nam is? was it like a paper for a specific molecule or was it more like a gas chromatograph that gave you a signal in the cockpit? Sorry, chemistry flashback. Was it in tight to the aircraft or towed? That would indicate method of action and sate my curiosity quite a bit. (oh, look, something bright and shiny)
My Dad flew sniffer missions back in the day. Some day I'll coax him to tell the story.
Ry, you aren't getting picked on, you're bending over and presenting a target.
We're mostly in violent agreement, but you chose to cherry-pick some examples of "Air can do it!" We never said "air couldn't do *anything,*" we said, air is usually not the best primary means of doing it in regards to your scenario choices. Sometimes air leads, sometimes air follows. The more people there are in the target area, the more ground eyes-on lead, and "pull" from the air assets.
And for face recognition to work, you have to know the face already. And have an asset that can resolve sufficiently. They exist, but they aren't ubiquitious. Ground eyes on have a better chance in that regard.
And while I mentioned work, I didn't mention details. This (and many other unposted comments and posts) would be much different if I could blog work.
I ran the raw html through wordpress, which automatically converted it to visual format.
I was going after the insinuation that airpower cannot ever stop a terrorist
Not all terrorists are suicide bombers. Things would be a mite easier if all terrorists were suicide bombers, but it isn't.
Which is why I called it simplistic
Maybe if you could make all terrorists into suicide bombers just by writing it down in words, maybe it could become simplistic.
Somebody was running with an overgeneralization and I stepped in to correct it.
For someone that just made the specific issue of stopping suicide bombers into "stopping terrorists", you might not want to talk about how you are challenging "overgeneralizations".
Airpower can and does stop terrorists and suicide bombers.
And that came right after the previous sentence, so it is not as if you were clueless as to what was the original issue at stake. Over generalization, indeed.
It does happen
For somebody that likes to believe in purple, you sure like to gloss over all the foot work that had to be done before the air strikes are called in. Or do you think the SEALs going down south in Afghanistan are only looking for a good picnic spot?
Bogus is it? Perhaps I should remind you of the underlying reality that may have been conveniently forgotten here.
If I have an F-16/B-1/Armed drone team sitting on a pass in 24/7 all weather coverage that a terr must cross to teach, supply, drug, and then arm a suicide bomber and have thereby stopped the tango from going thru that pass or, when I blow said tango to smithereens as he tries to transit said pass, I've stopped said homicidal bomber cold, ain't I? -ry
What's bogus is that you have claimed these types of things happen because of air power.
You're missing the point, really. Using airpower, which, again, isn't just a means of delivering ordinance, but also a means of gathering and acting on information in real time, you *can* stop the terrorist cell from transiting to City X and then training a slue of suiciders.
The thesis that using air power allows a chain reaction that consists of acquiring good intel and acting upon that intel, then afterwards recycling the process, is false.
If you had included other elements to your thesis, then it may have been different, but you didn't include other elements in your thesis. Obviously because you had an inbuilt personal bias and wanted to slant the narrative towards the Air Force. That's the only reasonable explanation for why someone big on "purple" would refuse to ever mention the ground force elements when trying to make their point about the AF's coin support efforts.
If you still don't get it, allow me to rephrase.
Neither the article linked to from the Original Post nor your arguments have even hinted at whether such proof even exists, except as uncorrelated statistical inferences, that properly support the contention that the identification and nullification of terrorist forces can be done solely from the air using air power data gathering and reaction abilities. You've tried patching such things up with your recent comment, but that doesn't erase the fact that your previous comments were lacking in such evidenc
That first line is many things, but bogus ain't one of em.
Addendum, even if you retreat and say that AF isn't the "single" contributing factor to such ops, you are still left with the doggy bag thesis that essentially argues that the AF is the "primary causal\contributing" factor to the obtaining of the necessary intel background work that precedes the military's use of air strikes on terrorist forces in advance of terrorist attacks on Coalition assets.
I can think of three such convoys over the last 5 years that have been portrayed as 'massacres' by airpower which followed this template which have been shown in the media to be US bungling.
If you can prove that such enemy convoys were identified, marked as foes, and authorized to be destroyed solely with air assets and information, then go right ahead. Nobody's stopping you.
To say that there is 0 chance of info to act upon from air is false.
Concerning this issue, it is very easy to clarify and negate. Neither John, BillT, nor I, I would argue, would ever pretend that a ground force outnumbered 3 to 1 or 10 to 1 or 30 to 1 could ever hope to achieve victory with minimal casualties had they not had the benefit of air recon, indirect fire support via artillery, or close air support. I, personally, don't say that such forces won a great victory over AL Qaeda just by mentioning the discipline of the Marines, their firepower, or what not. I would be required to also mention the part air power had played, since without air power, it would be extremely hard for an outnumbered force to defeat a far larger force, if not impossible. It is not like I would believe that the enemies were all killed by rifle or support weapon fire, unless I was willing to pretend that bombs were magically conjured from the air to fall on enemy positions by Marine wizards.
And yet... if you look at your previous posts here talking about the Air Force's capabilities, you have never mentioned the part ground forces had to play in order to allow the AF to do their part. You didn't mention it, until people made you mention it recently.
Take that, as you will.
That C-3 is getting you actionable. That PRed is getting you actionable.
Be that as it may, it doesn't have much to do with the Original Post's topic concerning how the surge turned things around in Iraq solely due to some 11x up in munition usage and what not percentage increase in the use of air power post-surge.
The reality is that there are only so many C-3 and Predators around. To ignore the doctrine changes concerning COIN by Petraeus in favor of the Air Force as being the primary causal factor in the surge's success, is a bit more than about actionable intelligence from the air. You got a lot more soldiers than you have predators or airplanes. That's a simple quantitative difference, especially if the quality of intel gathered is so much superior or more refined in human to human contact situations.
If you want to turn an issue about defending the Army's use of airpower into a subject about how the Air Force is being unreasonably criticized, then be my guest, but it has nothing to do with me, since that's not the original topic I disagreed wth.
You may or may not be backing such an argument as was originally made in the link, but so long as you refuse to recognize some specific things explicitly in words here, I can't make a statement of agreement.
Again, I was countering the opinion that air has no means to counter terrs/homiciders.
i wrote that you can't stop suicide bombers with air strikes or air power, and I meant it. In this case "stopping suicide bombers" does not consist solely of killing them or what not.
Stopping them would essentially mean defeating them and preventing any future advantage from a future bombing.
In order to do that, you must protect the neighborhood that the bomber wants to target. You must ally with and train up local guards that will stop the bomber when you have to get some sleep or are going back to base to re-whatever.
And your opinion concerning how air can counter suicide bombers was countered by my view that such actions are simply strategically defensive in nature, and not all that proactive with attacking and striking the enemy and making them react to us. That does not stop suicide bombers from defeating us. It slows them down, yes, but it does not stop them. It does not make a system like the US, where suicide bombers have almost no effect on national security, until the area defenses go unvigilant that is. It wasn't Air Force jets that prevented Flight 93 from crashing into the capitol. It was individual Americans, foot soldiers in the newest war of the 21st century that distributed the intel, received the intel, and used the intel to decide and act.
All of that leads to the conclusion that air power is not the decisive factor in the surge's success. It is, instead, more likely a "decisive result" of the surge's success. So long as you keep arguing against that point, you are also arguing against that contention/conclusion. And so long as you do that, I cannot agree with you.
If you don't want to argue against that point, then it might be wise for you to address your stance on the article's contention that the surge's success was primarily caused by increase in air power and usage of air dropped munitions first, rather than ignoring it in order to pursue your own issues.
That's in part why the argument is overly simplistic.
If you had properly understood what people were actually arguing, then it wouldn't have to be so simplistic, now would it.
Ymar, really, you're focusing over much on killing and body counts.
That's rather ironic when I have just wrote that I consider stopping suicide bombers to not be killing them with air strikes or anything else for that matter.
It is creating conditions that matter, not how many terrs we kill.
If that is the case, then it doesn't particularly matter how many targets you cook with a JDAM left of the Boom, now does it? If that is so, then why even mention such things in the first place, unless it is to boaster the AF's reputation?
I never said it was air alone when i actually did say that air alone cannot.
While you never said it was air alone, you mentioned nothing but air assets. So what you did was produce an indirect and implicit statement using the tool of omission. I cannot assume you were unaware of this, so I could only surmise that you knew what you were doing ahead of time and had good reason, to you, for doing so.
You're drilling way down, Chief, into one scenario and not admitting that another exists.
The battleground locale is the surge, specifically pre and post surge. That "one scenario" is particularly important to explaining the strategic differences between pre and post surge, which is the primary subject of contention here. Or at least, one primary subject of contention.
Another "may" exist, but "may" and the reality of the surge, are two different things. I had specifically directed my comments to the surge and the article's position on the Army's doctrines pre or post surge. For you to respond with some "general AF power thingie usage in Afghanistan or elsewhere" is a little bit too much, don't you think.
You and Unk never said air was useless in COIN, but someone did imply it.
I, or "we" if you prefer, were responding to criticism that the Army had a problem with the proper utilizatin of air power in Iraq. We were also responding to the argument that post-surge results were primarily because of increases in air power usage.
Now, you may have thought our responses were an "implication" that air was useless in COIN, but that was something in your subjective framework going on. It had nothing to do with reality or the context of the situation.
If your "belief" that "someone" implied that air power was useless in COIN caused you to imply and implicitly state that air power is only need for "good things" tm to happen, then that action is solely your responsibility. Not anyone else's.
In our situation, "Rick" in the article was arguing for AF power/domination usage as being a primary cause of the surge's success and I was arguing against such a thesis.
You, Ry, come in and give support to the AF.
Trying to claim afterwards that you weren't "taking sides" and were "being Purple", doesn't cut it.
I'm no 'we'll win entirely by air' guy, but the AF is getting slagged and their input to COIN belittled for no good reason by some around here.
One reason that didn't cut it with me was because it was too much similar to that thing about "I'm a supporter of the troops but..." or "I'm a conservative, but...".
If the situation was Army vs AF and some guy interrupted the argument and said "I'm not a total AF fan, but the Army has got things all wrong concerning the Air Power in X, Y, Z, B, C, U, E, and...."
You think the guy arguing for the Army is going to pay much attention to that part about "I'm not a total AF fan"?
If the Army defender then said "why are you solely focusing on the AF's virtues in this argument?" and you said "I'm not taking sides, I said that before hand".
Army defender: if you aren't taking sides, then why have you spent 90% of your time bolstering the AF's case?
Would anyone, in a real situation, buy this scenario that the third party individual was not taking sides?
Thing is, you check the caravan out in other ways before you decide it's a target.
What's it hauling? Mail? Could be the terrs are getting their instructions via coded want ads in somebody's hometown newspaper which he reads, discards, and the terr picks it out of the trash. Who's in it? Merchants? School kids going home for the weekend? Terrs disguised as Maryknoll missionay nuns? Local rock groups with a gig in the bazaar?
Does the caravan's arrival trigger the uptick or is it a handy diversion for the flock of goats with blocks of C4 tied on their bellies coming in from the opposite direction?
Now, what's naughty depends on the ROE -- it could be as seemingly innocent as being in a certain area or as blatant as driving a Scud around on a TEL.
And the definition of minimal acceptable collateral damage *will vary* with both time and place. Nobody likes that, but it is what it is when it is for very good reasons.
It's more like in competition wrestling where the refereee pretends to turn his back to admonish the other team, and our team sneaks in a few good licks and bodies over the ropes and then escape before the referee turns his head.